Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
The United States, Britain and the Soviet Union agreed in 1963 to stop testing nuclear weapons everywhere except underground. The negotiations had been running since 1958 and had always failed on the same point: verifying an underground test required inspectors on the other side's territory, and the Soviet Union would not accept them in any number the Americans thought sufficient. Two things changed in 1962. The Cuban missile crisis frightened both governments badly enough to produce a direct teletype link between the two capitals, and the argument about fallout had become a public issue — strontium-90 from atmospheric tests was being found in milk and in children's teeth, and the tests conducted since 1945 had already been enormous, including a Soviet device of some fifty megatons. The solution was to drop the hard part. A treaty banning tests in the atmosphere, in space and under water could be verified by each side's own monitoring, which removed the inspection question entirely. It was signed in Moscow in August and ratified by the Senate in September. France and China did not sign and went on testing in the air until 1974 and 1980. Atmospheric contamination fell sharply and the arms race did not slow at all; both sides simply moved underground and continued, and the number of warheads rose for another twenty years. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty of 1996 covers everything and has still not entered into force. Kennedy pushed it personally and used a speech at American University in June 1963 to make the case, arguing that both sides had a mutual interest in a just and genuine peace. He described the treaty afterwards as the first step on a road that might be a thousand miles long.
- Year: 1963 CE
- Category: Diplomatic
